Research vessel Mt. Rose in the marina at Winter

The Research Vessel Mt. Rose is a 21-foot Custom Weld jet boat used to study nearshore water quality. The lack of a propeller provides us the ability to assess quality of water in water as little as two-feet deep. Water is collected from a custom boom mounted on the bow and is passed through a number of sensors located in the cabin. For routine operation, turbidity, relative chlorophyll, water temperature, and light attenuation are measured every second. This data is tagged with the GPS coordinates of the  measurements facilitating the construction of two-dimensional maps depicting nearshore water quality conditions.

Research vessel Mt. Rose at Lake Tahoe

Real-time data are provided to the crew through the custom Rose Tracker program. Rose Tracker  aggregates the data signals from the variety of sensors through one or more RS-232 streams. Color coordinated sensor values are sent to Google Earth for real-time plotting. Rose Tracker provides several other functions including a customized interface to Google Earth, calibration routines and on-the-fly calibration corrections for each sensor, keeping track of special waypoints such as buoys and/or hazards to avoid, geotagging of notes, and custom alarms if incoming data  exceeds expected values. Rose Tracker can also follow the progress of other  vehicles, such as when nearshore and on-shore measurements need to be taken at the same time. This real-time mapping of the data allows the crew to conduct immediate quality assurance of the data and respond to changing water quality conditions.

Data

Data collected aboard the R/V Mt. Rose can be found here.